So far as the Christian Church time: concerned, the past year has been missionaries as a mark for their arrows. In sections of the.country, the looting has been carried with such efficiency, that nothing remains to be saved. Over the entrance to some of the mission premises, Inrge hand-written letters display the announcement, "Everything below the heavens is common to all." By way of side scrolls, such sentences as these are found:—"Down with the Christian Church and the Christian devils:" "The cross of Christ is a tool of Impenalism to crush the people."
There is no mistaking the ganized effort to make the Christian Church an offscouring and refuse the midst of the people. Chapels have become a desolation and the hand of destruction has turned them, together with many of our schools, into a dunghill. Violence has been meted out to the child of God end for months they trembled and been held in agonizing suspense. God comes very near in life's great hour, and one has been privileged to hear some bright testimonies of steadfastness, during the stormy days, when reproach and fury were poured out like fire. In this time of trial, the sufferings of the Christians were smoothed with hope and cheered with song. A. preacher told me that one day, when an army was passing through the town, the name of the Christian Church was pointed out to a Russian military adviser, who marched with the troops. This man stepped and spent some time disfiguring the name with his walking stick.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.